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Your Rhythm, Your Resonance, Your Heart: More than a Mere Organ
Your Rhythm, Your Resonance, Your Heart: More than a Mere Organ
Did you know that your heart, your personal inner drum, beats an average of 37 million times a year?! This rhythm, in a healthy heart, is highly adaptable and always shifting. Much like the anatomical heart, a healthy energetic heart center (Anahata) must also be adaptive; must ebb and flow with the rhythms of life in order to be healthy, hearty and whole.
Shiva Rea (Tending the Heart Fire) explores the body’s system of entrainment. The medical dictionary defines entrainment as “the synchronization and control of cardiac rhythm by an external stimulus.” Or in other words, as Rea says “a state of yoga, or joining together, a coherence between multiple rhythmic patterns.” (p. 56). Understanding entrainment is an opportunity to explore how every single experience leaves an impact on our sacred heart. What is this “external stimulus”? you might ask…we’ll explore how it is everything and all!
Pacemaker cells in your heart organ first form in the womb and find a spontaneous song. After the first cell is there, all others pacemaker cells begin to jump into the dance at the same tempo. What is incredible about these pacemaker cells is that if one is removed from the collective…it will lose it’s connection to the collective beat and will eventually die. Miraculously, if just ONE single other pacemaker cell is placed near it (they don’t even need to be touching!) they will resume their collective song and beat in unison. This energetic space between the two cells has such a strong resonance that it unites the two separate cells through this sweet, beating experience. Consider that! The energy field between the two (separated) cells is so strong that they FEEL each other’s presence.
With this information we can begin to understand the master communicator that is the heart; perhaps even more weighted in our connective experience than the brain. Indeed, the heart begins beating without any signal from the brain at all as it has not yet formed in the womb! The power of the heart radiates through the blood to all other parts of your body. It has it’s own unique rhythm. It has a magical electromagnetic pulsing field where the space between the cells keeps them all in the same communicative dance. Now re-consider the last time you felt a rush of joy or the anguish of loss. Indeed, in this context, we can begin to see how every single experience we pass through on any given day can impact the “fiery sun” (Rea) of the heart and therefore the entire body. What is felt, what is brought close to our electromagnetic field, has the power to shift our rhythm.
“My heart is burning with love. All can see this flame. My heart is pulsing with passion, like waves on an ocean. I’m at home, wherever I am. And in the room of lovers I can see with closed eyes the beauty that dances. Behind the veils intoxicated with love, I too dance the rhythm of this moving world.” ~Rumi
For more on the incredible journey of the human heart, check out “Tending the Heart Fire” by Shiva Rea.
By contributor: Avani Gilbert
